Don't Reopen Your Restaurant Until You Read This

The restaurant business has never been more challenging. For ourF＆W Pro指南重新开放餐厅, we've been collecting wisdom and best practices from leaders in the hospitality industry to help you navigate this unprecedented time

It feels like a lifetime ago that restaurant lawyer Jasmine Moy and I sat down together—in person—for a conversation aboutwhat people need to know before they open a restaurant。Public life has changed in almost unfathomable ways sincethat podcastin May, 2019, with the spread of COVID-19 and the overdue national reckoning on police brutality and systemic racism that was sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Restaurants owners and their employees have weathered a catastrophic loss of income, convoluted governmental support systems, a broad spectrum of behavior from diners when it comes to wearing masks, ever-changing guidance from state and federal officials, increased hygiene protocols for the protection of both staff and customers, and a host of other complications.

As restaurants around the country began to reopen in fits and starts, I called on Moy once again to share insights from what her clients are facing, and where she sees opportunities for a better future.

注意：这次对话发生在2020年6月19日。它已被凝结和编辑，以清晰地进行。在restaurantlawyer.nyc。

I have several dozen clients for whom I'm trying to renegotiate leases or alternative rent deals for the next 12 to 24 months. I was, at the beginning, very hopeful that we would all be able to work something reasonable, that landlords would want to keep a tenant inside the space. It has been an uphill battle for a good 80% of my clients. I have a few clients who are with very large institutional landlords who see the writing on the wall and are offering quite good deals on rent. These are major property developers with many billions of dollars worth of assets across the United States. Because they are so well-positioned, flush with cash or have so much sway with their banks, they are able to offer things like full rent abatements through the end of the year with severe rent discounts through 2021. That is wonderful.

但是我有很多客户的房东。如果房东对其财产有抵押贷款，或者财产已杠杆债券或财产有债务，则未经其银行批准，他们将无法同意替代租金结构。因此，银行是拥有权威的人，有时不是房东。

Related:Everything Restaurants Need to Know About Dealing with Their Landlord

I don't want to give landlords too much credit, though, because I have several clients in small family-owned buildings, whose landlords do not have mortgages on the property. Everything they're making is pure profit beyond what they're spending on real estate taxes. The line that I'm hearing is, "You should have gotten all of thisloan moneyso you should be paying the full rent with the loan."

首先，餐馆在细长的利润率下经营和贷款很难。他们中的大多数都在使用它来支付建筑费用。在您没有收入的几个月中，支付贷款以支付过去的租金，这是很难证明的。我一直在告诉人们整理几个专业级别，将其Excel电子表格删除，并绘制各种收入情况时的外观。假设他们只能以50％的容量甚至25％的容量开放。也许您可以在人行道上得到几张桌子。那是什么样的？您认为企业负担得起什么？将其放在纸上，并将其交付给房东，因为“这是我能做的最好的。这是我解释为什么这是我能做的最好的事情”，并试图得到回应。

我让客户为他们的提议提供极度热情的防御，一些房东基本上嘲笑他们。这些人已经完成了这项工作，看看他们的业务可以做什么和无能为力。他们的房东说：“我们不会接近这一点。”他们正在认真考虑关闭。我还没有很多人选择关闭，但是我有很多人正在运行数字，意识到数字并没有真正的意义，并且非常接近痛苦的决定重新开放对他们没有意义。

I certainly have a number of clients who are desperately trying to see if they can make a carry-out or catering model or a large format family meal to take home—frozen, bottled cocktails and things like that. They're trying to see what kind of revenues they can have and maximize that so that they can offer their landlord as much as possible. But there are some folks who had places that fundamentally do not adapt to takeout. Front of house service was a very important part of their concept and that's a really hard thing to translate to carry-out. They're looking at this and saying, "This is not what I set out to build. This is not the dream that I had."

我有其他人说：“我知道我每天都在与房东进行脚趾与脚趾的战斗。我要开放。我要看看我可以赚钱起来。如果在三个月内无法达成协议，我会关闭。但是，为什么我现在不尝试打开，看看什么样的碎屑，我现在可以收集什么样的碎屑？”

有些人获得贷款资金,有版本y specific ways that you are supposed to be spending that money. So they're all sitting down with their bookkeepers and accountants, trying to figure out if they can make it work, how much of the loan they can maybe keep and how much loan they can get forgiven.

It's a lot of dominoes falling. If they can get the loan to work in a certain way, maybe they can incentivize the landlord to make a deal with them because they're able to give the landlord a lump sum of money, and then they can reopen. It's hard because everything is so tightly connected that it's very hard to make one decision without at the very least an agreement with your landlord. Things are in a bit of a standstill while they try to figure out again how to use loan money, what kind of money they think they'll be able to earn.

Folks in New York are trying to get outdoor dining dialed in. We don't know which streets are going to be open, which streets are going to be closed. Every little thing changes every day. I'm getting 40 email blasts every day from the Hospitality Alliance and Independent Restaurant Coalition, from city council members, from law firms. Hopefully over the next month or two enough pieces will fall into place where people will be able to decide one way or the other.

但是，您看着波特兰，像安迪·里克（Andy Ricker）这样的人，那里有什么，七个餐厅或其他东西，并决定只开放其中一家。我发现令人震惊，但也许我不应该。我认为这可能是这里的煤矿中的金丝雀。

非常有趣的是，我收到了很多人的电话电子邮件，他们说：“我只剩下一两年的租约，我不会重新开放，因为我不想提出这一点钱或借钱，因为我不会有时间偿还。”

重新开放将花费金钱。安装塑料分隔线要花钱。订购足够的PPE，花费金钱，花费钱来订购运输集装箱，重置您的餐厅。购买可以放在人行道上的桌子和椅子要花钱。因此，即使是那些可能认为他们可以重新开放的人，也许无法获得30、40，40,000美元的$ 50,000，他们准备重新打开，重新货架上的货架可能需要花费50,000美元。我认为结束时关闭的数量将很大。

多元化的收入来源应该是人们正在考虑的事情，因为这是一种良好的商业意义。而且，如果我们从历史意义上看亚洲或大流行病的情况，此后我们可能会再进行一两个回合。如果有一种方法可以通过整合对社区，您的当地农民，当地制造商和工匠的良好事物来找到一种使业务可持续发展的方法，那真是太神奇了。

Related:How My Husband and I Turned Our Restaurant into a Grocery Store Overnight

至少对我来说，最令人愉快的变化之一是当地餐馆开始将农产品盒放在一起时。能够看看当地农民的当地农产品真是太好了。在我们附近的人们的支持下，这感觉很好。我们只能去家之内20分钟内步行到的地方。我希望能够粘住，能够获得这些华丽的萝卜和果岭，令人惊叹的黄油和油脂等。

所有的话，这些东西都不是便宜的。我非常荣幸能够花费您需要花在这些盒子上的那种盒子来获得美丽的生菜。这不是没有成本。我们需要学习在鸡尾酒，汉堡和鸡尾酒上花更多的钱。如果我们从其他地方获得它，我们需要学会为此付出更多或更大格式的餐点。我们已经交付了几个。在过去的几个月中，Fany Gerson一直在这样做 - Poozoles和炖肉，一堆玉米饼被掉下来，然后您得到了这些华丽的玉米饼，华丽的汤，玉米饼，玉米饼汤。这真的很美味，但是只有在您找到一种出售人们会付出的价格的方法时才有效努力创建它。

但是我认为以某种方式建立自己的模型的人们很难。您可以找到一个空间，并确定已经将业务模型和概念放在一起后可以支付的租金。您决定您是否会更加休闲或更美味。您要几次转动这些桌子？好的，您要定价食物的价格是多少？亚搏电竞好的，那么我们就认为每个人的价格，这就是我们每晚可能会服务多少人。这就是我们认为我们要做的多少。这意味着我们可以将这笔钱花在租金上。

You base your rent upon what you think you're going to be making. For folks who are going to be at 50% capacity or 50% of revenues for the next year and a half, it makes the window rent untenable. I think if there's a silver lining here, it's that anybody who was thinking about opening a business can now retool their plan. They can add these other revenue streams or the diversification of income via various avenues.

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that无缝和grubhub确实是掠夺性的。Those 30% fees, 40% fees were disgusting and so counterproductive. So I think we're maybe a little more enlightened. There are other delivery options now. I think Tock charges like a half or a third of what Grubhub and Seamless were charging. Folks who are thinking about starting a business in the future can account for the fact that maybe their rent needs to be a lot lower than what people might have signed on for. They're taking into account these other revenues, doing things like being able to have access to a delivery provider that is not trying to bleed them dry.

I think the market rate on rents is going to drop, so somebody coming into the business after this will have different and better opportunities. It's just very difficult for the folks who have already locked themselves into things. I bow down to all of the people who've found ways to make this work in a way that makes sense. But it's a hustle. I even think that the clients I have who are trying to do this are probably still only breaking even. I don't know that they're making a ton of money selling boxes. They're getting by, but that's not enough.

Khushbu Shah's list of最好的新餐厅上面有食亚搏电竞物摊。实际上，这就是很多人开始的地方，因为进入的障碍要低得多。许多食品厅亚搏电竞都在我们所谓的租金上工作，这是根据您出售的销售量支付租金的，这使得食品大厅和供应商合作伙伴从某种意义上都是。而在传统的砖和砂浆中，您的房东不在乎您的表现如何。他们所关心的是，他们从您那里获得了这个固定的租金号码。

我认为，在任何世界上，我们都不应该排除这些使其在这些较大格式设置中工作的供应商。也就是说，他们没有很多工作，这是经营餐厅的更昂贵的部分。餐馆的人工成本大约是您理想的销售额的40％。您可以将其保持在40％或更少。35％会很棒。

很多人都说了这句话，我很乐意加上合唱：小费是种族主义者。经过一项研究，已经进行了研究表明，小费是不加选择的，这与您收到的服务没有太大关系。这与许多内部偏见有关，无论您认为自己是否有这些偏见，它们都存在。这存在。确定客户的内部偏见是不正确的。现在是一个好时机，看看您是否可以在一个模型上生存，该模型向所有人支付公平的工资来解决这个问题，看看这是否是重置的好机会。

如果每个人都被迫这样做会更有帮助。当丹尼·迈耶（Danny Meyer）的联合广场酒店集团（Union Square Hospitality Group）试图转移到一个模型上，因为餐厅中的每个人都在同一竞争环境中，有些人对此感到生气。现在，由于许多原因，必须提高价格。也许租金是您的销售中的一部分，就像您的意思一样。您正在做不同级别的服务，例如执行和较大的格式，或出售冷冻饺子或您正在旋转的任何东西。

这是一个伟大的时间,看看我们可以做模型work again. People are going to have to pay more for this and they should have been paying more all along. Maybe this is a good thing, a good opportunity to reset. But it's hard to stand firm on some of these issues when they cost more, when your livelihood is at stake, if you've put some of your life savings into building a restaurant. It's not an easy thing to do, but I do think it's the right thing to do. If you can't make the model work, maybe that says something about your concept and your model not being the right one for this time. People are having to answer really tough questions.

I'm originally from a suburb of Chicago where most of the folks who were back at the house in all the restaurants I worked at were from Mexico. They had these tight knit communities where they were living with 10 people in an apartment. They couldn't open bank accounts because they didn't have social security numbers. They would have what they call a tanda, which was all of them voluntarily contributing funds to a pool. Each like a month a different person would receive those funds. So they basically had to create their own internal banking systems because they were under-banked, they were outside the system.

They would work a full shift at a restaurant and then they would work through the middle of the night, acting as couriers or delivering flowers and getting three hours of sleep, and then coming back to work at the restaurant. The fact that working full time at a restaurant still forces you to have to take these other jobs, essentially other full-time jobs at the same time—maybe it shouldn't be shocking, but in many ways it is. There's never been a better time to reset and re-envision what restaurants are.

在纽约和许多其他州，还有整个小费信用 - 雇主可以向员工支付每小时2至3美元的想法，而提示则旨在弥补工人的最低小时工资的其余部分。这是淫秽的。

因此，我们需要更改，但是餐馆老板不能承担所有责任。我们当然需要在政府内部的立法层面上进行改变。人们为此游说。我们正在努力，现在对餐饮业有很多关注，餐饮业需要生存的东西。我确实认为人们在听。我希望在接下来的几年中，我们将看到我们需要的那种转变。现在，人们对我们一直在忽略的弱点有更多关注。

如果您正在查看客户行为不端的餐厅，那么餐厅可能会以稀薄的利润开展业务。谁知道他们有多少员工？但是他们当然可能没有足够的钱来雇用员工来成为公众的保镖。那么在哪里可以弥补差异？现在，您要做的最后一件事是报警。目前没有信任，尤其是在纽约，他们能够以负责任的方式处理事情。

那么，餐馆老板如何与试图将公众置于车道的人们获得帮助？我打电话给州参议员，有人说卫生部有员工，他们所做的就是从餐厅到餐厅检查人们的厨房。是否有一个领域，DOH可以让一些员工去特定的开放街道，并进行一些警务或帮助一些警务？我们有什么选择？我确实认为这将需要一些创造力，但是我认为酒店中的人们，开设餐馆的人，厨师的人是我认识的最具创新性，最具韧性的人。

如果有些人可以找到一种方法来制作这项工作并解决其中一些杰出的摩擦点，那么我相信这是酒店社区。

从心理健康和安全的角度来看，员工的福祉将非常困难。但是，其中最重要的部分是人们会再次出去吃饭。但是，我们可以以每天进来为您服务的人们健康的方式做到这一点吗？那当然是最重要的。

第二是找到真正最大化收入流的方法，同时找到同时支持社区的方法。无论是帮助工匠还是当地制造商出售其商品，还是为您的当地农民或食品提供商提供其他支持的方式。亚搏电竞我正试图竭尽全力支持少数族裔企业。我对我从哪里得到东西以及如何从中获得东西的关注。我认为，对于那些有额外收入，有钱的人来说，他们应该对在哪里花钱进行真正的思想。我希望合作伙伴，与保释债券资金的合作伙伴关系，与其他非营利组织的合作伙伴关系成为主要的中流阶段。没有有色人种的人，餐厅行业无法生存，并确保每天都要牢记联系和必要性，而我们花费的每一美元都不会生存，我认为这将是令人难以置信的。

第三，与专家交谈，即使我们也试图弄清楚这一点。法律已经到位，有某些法规。我没有所有答案，因为法律含糊不清，语言没有意义。他们将不得不发布澄清。即使我也有真正的绝望。我正在努力通过他们的方式努力。我只是一个海绵，试图从任何地方吸收很多信息。有时您会感到完全困惑，感到不知所措，您不确定其中的一些。只知道我是一个专业人士，我也有这种感觉，所以不是你。我们都在尽力而为。